Leah Greenblatt

Shot by cinematographer Shabier Kirchner in hazy, endless-summer half-light, Kitchen finds a kind of urban poetry in the swooping parabolas of the skate park and the rumbling scrape of wheels on pavement.

If the storyline is strictly something old and borrowed, though, a peek at the crazy-rich rainbow of Asian experience — even one as razzle-dazzlingly too-much as this one — feels not just new, but way overdue.

Madeline is the kind of movie that won’t come anywhere near the mainstream, and clearly wasn’t meant to. But for the dozens of viewers it will almost certainly baffle or exasperate, there will be one or two completely captured by its peculiar magic.

Forster (Finding Neverland, World War Z) never quite finds the alchemy in Milne’s timeless tales, or the melancholy sweetness of his being-and-nothingness koans. Instead it’s just an earnest tribute, tastefully faithful to the source — and flatter, somehow, than the story ever was on the page.

The movie’s arc is too conventional by half, but the appeal of the two main actors keeps it (sorry) afloat, maybe more than it should.

Director Marc Turtletaub pulls thoughtful, carefully shaded performances from Denman, Khan, and, most of all, Scottish actress Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire, No Country for Old Men), who refuses to let Agnes be an easy avatar for midlife longing and suburban discontent.

Bynum shoots it all in high pop-pastiche style, with a near-constant barrage of neon freeze frames, slow-pan party shots, and romantic montages set to an eclectic, decade-spanning soundtrack (Tarzan Boy, David Bowie, Roxette, Suicide).

If McQueen feels like it’s missing some deeper insights, it may be because its subject kept so much of himself hidden from even the people who loved him most.... What’s left is a fascinating if incomplete portrait of genius interrupted — and a life that should have lasted much longer than it did.

Kimberly Reed’s taut documentary is also damning, clear-eyed, and as gripping as any John Grisham thriller.

A shiny-bright jukebox musical with a heart of gold and a plot of pure polyester, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again works hard to be the feel-giddy movie experience of the summer. And it mostly succeeds in its own glittery, aggressively winsome way.

Eventually, it’s Wealth‘s inherent too-muchness that undoes its own best intentions.

Woman could use some of the quieter character nuance of a movie like last year’s "Wind River," another fact-based drama that reflected the struggle of indigenous people with a sensitive, unvarnished kind of naturalism; White’s well-meant version is undoubtedly incomplete, and gilded with a certain amount of Hollywood silliness.

Whitney feels like the kind of film anyone who cared at all about her should see: the fullest portrait yet — if one that will always, inevitably fall short — of a singular artist and human being who may have eluded understanding in the end, but still gave the world far more than she ever got back.

By trading in all its intrigue and emotional subtleties for the gotcha moment it’s clearly been waiting for, Tree wins the battle but loses the war.

It all bumps along, as road trips do, through silliness and boredom and occasional, unexpected charm. But Feste’s story never really gets the rhythms right, and Boundaries finally reaches the end of the road, feeling like nothing so much as a missed opportunity.

A dizzy, fizzy comedy with occasional flashes of real wit.

Subtle it is not; Strangelove can feel aggressively self-aware, nouveau John Hughes with a pocket full of f-bombs and carefully worked one-liners.

Writer-director Drew Pearce must have done something right to get a cast like this to sign on for what is essentially a loving, highly stylized homage to the kind of camp apocalyptia John Carpenter used to make; the only thing missing here is an Ernest Borgnine cameo and Kurt Russell scowling in an eye patch.

Ocean’s 8’s girls-just-wanna-have-grand-larceny conceit is the kind of starry, high-gloss goof the summer movie season was made for, even if it feels lightweight by the already zero-gravity standards of the genre.

What saves it is the casting (Fanning especially is fantastic, both winsome and wonderfully strange) and Mitchell’s obvious fondness for his milieu. His giddy, knowingly camp direction has a sort of glitter-stick DIY spirit that keeps the movie aloft long after the story itself has run out of road.

A movie seemingly custom-made for the era of alternative facts, American Animals feels like a new kind of true-crime thriller: one that shamelessly rewrites its truths in real time as it goes.

In an industry that defines “mature audiences” as anyone old enough to vote, a movie centered entirely on women over 65 — a sex comedy, no less — feels like some kind of small Hollywood miracle.

Director Dominic Cooke is mostly known for his Olivier Award-winning theater work, but Chesil never feels stagey or static. It’s beautifully shot, and he pulls lovely performances from both his leads.

It’s in Deadpool’s DNA to channel the wild id of a 12-year-old boy — a very clever one who happens to love boobs, Enya, and blowing stuff up. Which is dizzy fun for a while, like eating Twinkies on a Gravitron. Eventually, though, it just wears you out.

Its title sounds like the premise for some kind of high-adrenaline adventure about maze-running or outgunning a nuclear apocalypse. But The Escape is both less thrilling and much scarier, in its own way — a quiet domestic-drama chamber piece with a vein of pure desperation thrumming beneath it.

A charming and generally painless way to spend two hours. It’s not nearly as sharp as some of the best stuff she’s done, but it’s pointedly kinder too, wrapping even its nastiest characters.

The story works well enough in its own moodily familiar way, but it’s not only the movie’s palette that’s stylishly leached of color: Its main characters’ backstories feel perfunctory, the dialogue leans heavy on exposition and hard-boiled cliché, and even Owen looks worn down.

Overboard lists and wanders through the shoals of secondhand comedy and eventually, just drifts away.